Profitability of three leaved yam production in Etche Local Government Area of Rivers State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study was designed to evaluate the profitability of three leaved yam (Bitter Yam) production in Etche Local Government Area of Rivers State, Nigeria.  Purposive and multistage sampling technique were used to select 102 respondents out of which 79 respondents returned their questionnaires. Primary  data were collected with the use of wellstructured questionnaire. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, simple regression, and gross margin  model. The result showed that majority of them were males, aged mostly between 66-79 years with 48.1% of them attaining secondary  education. Also, 78.5% were married while majority (60%) of the farmers had farm size ranging between 0.5 to 1.0 hectares. Results also show that the  gross margin of N554, 658 was realized, implying that three leaved yam production is profitable in the study area. Problems faced by the farmers were  inadequate finance, high cost of transportation, high cost of labour, no access to fertilizer and high cost of tubers. There is the need to ensure that the  extension agents visit the sweet potato farmers for proper information dissemination.